if-you-don't-watch-it-you-should-start

Hey, Major! Just saw your post about your Google alerts and you mentioned a Wattpad incident. Can I ask what it was? (Or if you don't want to get into it, maybe just a general idea?) I just started posting my fics there and am now wondering if I shouldn't have or if there're certain things I should watch out for?

I would sincerely and in all earnestness encourage you 100% to NOT DO THAT.

Please, PLEASE support and post to Archive of Our Own, a site that is actually fan-run for the explicit purpose of archiving and sharing and protecting and even studying fanfiction.

Wattpad was started as a “story sharing/recommending site” — it was supposed to be for original fiction and stories would pop up as recommendations for people as soon as they were done reading one story so that they could find more original fiction just like what they’d enjoyed. This did not happen. Teens and tweens populated the site and they brought fanfiction with them. Wattpad only recently turned into a site that supports or cares about fanfiction. They are not fandom-focused and they are only promoting fanfic now, on places like their Tumblr, with generic top-five lists and their information is skewed towards the most popular pieces in any single fandom.

This for-profit attitude, just sliding into what the kids are doing because it’s where the popularity lies, has encouraged Wattpad to become nothing but a den of plagiarism. I had never heard of the site until I got a Google Alert on Pie Without Plot that went to Wattpad.

I didn’t understand what I was seeing at first. It turns out a person was slowly copy/pasting Pie Without Plot, chapter-by-chapter, to their Wattpad. There were personal comments at the end of each of the first two chapters like, “What do you think of it :) should I go on?” which lead the users followers to believe that they were the one writing the story. I’m pretty sure PWP is still in the top 50 of all Dean/Cas fics, it was even higher-ranked at the time — they were blatantly stealing a VERY popular fic, with no qualms and claiming ownership. I asked people to go over there with me and ask the user to take it down. It turns out their whole account was pretty much copy/pasted fics. Other people told me they’d already tried out Wattpad and that a lot of the site was simply young people copy/pasting because other young people just had not seen enough of the internet to know where the copy/pasting was from.

The user who attempted to repost PWP had done one thing that they assumed would protect them: they copy/pasted the fic info, all of it, including my original disclaimer, only the disclaimer was changed from “We do not own the rights to these characters, setting, show, etc. No harm is intended.” to “I do not own the rights to these characters, setting, show, fic, etc. No harm is intended.” Without any emphasis or any other mention that the fic wasn’t theirs. When they finally responded to all the messages we were sending them telling them to stop claiming the fic was theirs, they “apologized” quite insincerely, saying they hadn’t been claiming ownership of the fic, despite posting personal comments on each chapter. Then, in the very next INSTANT, turned tail and ran, deleting their whole account before I could even reply to the message they’d sent me in return.

Orange’s work was stolen. My work was stolen. A FAN’S WORK WAS STOLEN when the user even jacked the cover art from a PWP fanmix as the cover for the story.

And, since then, I’ve heard nothing but bad things about Wattpad from other users. I truly don’t understand their place in fandom. Young people who join fandom should be helped to the AO3 side of things where they genuinely care about fandom and not just site traffic.

Wattpad’s Tumblr spontaneously followed my face blog just a couple weeks ago, without saying a word about it. When I noticed, I sent them a message telling them I’d had a bad experience with Wattpad, did not ask for them to follow me, and did not want them following me. I asked them to unfollow and, when they didn’t in about a half hour, I simply blocked them for my own sake.

I did eventually get a message back from them saying that they didn’t mean to freak me out, they were just following “their favorite” SPN fic writers and they said that they do try to get copy/pasted “popular” fics, like Twist & Shout off the site.

This may be news to them, but not all fanfic is popular and it all needs to be protected. If T&S can get fucking jacked and PWP can get jacked and be reposted and people post reactions of genuine surprise, like they’ve never read the fic before and are delighted with each chapter, then what can happen to less-popular fics? Or fics that are simply RENAMED but still blatantly copy/pasted?

it’s hard to be more interested in characters than plot because creators obviously prioritize plot development over character development and i’m like “okay this is a cool storyline but there were no meaningful interactions between the characters at all so what’s even the point”

does anybody remember all those weird lessons about having good self esteem in elementary school? i remember just straight up not believing that anybody could actually have good self esteem because it was so foreign a concept to me. and that makes me sad for childhood me.

OMG I’M SO SORRY I’VE DECIDED TO BE MICHELLE GOMEZ’S SLAVE TONIGHT SO WATCH OUT FOR ALL THAT FAN BULLSHIT

i may be exaggerating, but this is the moment you guys— it’s do or die. tonight you will find out if you should have just unfollowed me from the start of my tumblah return. that’s when it all started… that’s when my life began again lmfaosweetbabyjesus

Sorry I am spamming you with messages right now, but Haikyuu is a really good series. The characters are all unique and have great development. You really grow support the team. I started with the anime, but the manga is also very good!

The only reason I am not starting it yet is because Sport anime is never my first choice (I only watched Free! for… for the sake of Mia and kyoani)

I hate sports I don’t really know should I start sport anime or not _(:3J_Z)_

Commentary to the 'Conservative' Conversation; I agree that most people should be able to turn away from being spoon fed by the media, but as someone in the film industry I've come to understand just how powerful our influence is. For example, after the Avengers movie came out Schwarma sales skyrocketed. You are what you eat, and people don't realize that when they watch TV, they feed their brains information and TONS of subliminal messaging. Even a little bit has much influence.

And that’s completely true. Sad, but wholly true. It doesn’t change my stance on it, however—I wholeheartedly believe people need to recognize their decisions to realize what they’re doing and come to their own conclusions.

On a related note…

Anonymous said:

Devil’s
Advocate: Is it truly fair to say that the individual is wholly
responsible? Consider that even with additional research and effort that
long-time ideas associated with a particular group will remain, and
even when you actively attempt to avoid such lines of thought, often
your original associations come to mind due to the overesaturation of
one idea relating to another.

I didn’t say that the individual was WHOLLY responsible, just that it does fall to the individual to do an individual’s research.

Our
upbringing and environment has every impact on how we develop.
Sometimes we grow to stand directly against it, but more often than not
our upbringing is reflected as such in ourselves. But you are not your
parents; at some point you will find your ideas differ. And that’s
fine; that SHOULD happen. If ideas were to remain stagnant, we’d never
progress. But at the same time, we can’t just absorb different ideas
and assume they’re our own—we have to actually put our own thoughts
into them to make them of any worth.

Just a few days ago at the beginning of my history class, my classmates were complaining about how they aren’t going to win the away game and wouldn’t continue with regions. They were saying how they were going to get their asses kicked and how they suck. Our teacher walks up to the front of the class to start teaching, and he says, “If you don’t want somebody to hear something, you should probably talk quieter.” Everybody was so confused and asked him what he was talking about. He said, "You shouldn’t say you’re going to lose. I mean if you’re going to think like that then you might as well not go on the bus. If you don’t think you’re going to win you shouldn’t even be playing the sport.” They were all stunned. Then he told them, “Don’t expect me to not say anything to your coach.” Then they were all like oh shit because their coach is his wife.

for anybody that hasn’t finished twin peaks (i’m looking at you pixelsonthepage and perfumescenteddollabills ) or anybody that wants to start watching it should blacklist “twin peaks” or “tpspoilers” cause that’s what i’m gonna tag my stuff with. I’ll probably use the latter tag mostly for major spoilers and anything from the last episode.

doNT EVEN GET ME STARTED ON SIBLING AU OMFG ESPECIALLY WHEN THEYRE LAME CUTE TWINS OHMYGOD DAMN IT ELLE IVE ALREADY HAD UR GRAVESTONE READY EVER SINCE DAY 1 AND I LOVED TO HEAR UR AU BUT IVE NEVER SEEN TLOU SO I DONT THINK ILL UNDERSTAND IT IM SORRY

omFG well tbh it doesn’t follow the storyline exactly and it’s not hard to understand if i just talk about infected and things such as roxas literally punching people’s heads off with a fucking old rusty pipe while a little mangled and dirty & is basically not afraid to knock the daylight out of someone whether zombie/infected or asshole hunter or cannibal person or s/t